Above the Clouds: Managing Risk in the World of Cloud Computing

Chapter . Introduction

When discussing Cloud Computing, it is helpful to have a lexicon of common terms handy. Additional resources and expanded definitions are available on the National Institute of Standards and Technology website that have contributed greatly to the discussion of Cloud Computing.

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/

Cloud Computing provides widely accessible, on-demand, elastic computing power. These services are metered and charged back based on usage.

The capital investment in the data center is assumed by the Cloud provider and operation costs are passed on to the Cloud data center users. This shifting from a capital-intensive model to an operating-expense model shifts the material risk somewhat from the service ...